Lewis's Prophecy

 As I recall, there was a resurgence of interest in Sinclair Lewis's 1935 political novel, It Can't Happen Here—about the hypothetical rise of a fascist dictatorship in America—just about the time that Donald Trump was running for office. It's not hard to see why. Not only was Trump just the kind of carnival-barking demagogue that Lewis prophesied would be the downfall of our democratic institutions; the title also conveyed something of what we were all feeling: 

The prospect of a Trump presidency was just the sort of unthinkable-monstrosity-gradually-unfolding-before-our-eyes that Lewis seemed to have in mind. We all said to ourselves, in the early months of Trump's candidacy, "it can't happen here," and yet we—like Lewis's characters—lived to see it happen; the phrase therefore lent itself to the title of a thousand journalistic think pieces of the time—used with the same ironic tone with which Lewis intended it—one of which appeared on this blog, shortly after Trump won the GOP nomination. 

I was aware of all this; but still I did not read the novel at the time. I'm not sure why. It was not for lack of access—I've had a copy of the paperback reprint sitting on my shelves since I had purchased it ten years earlier from a local Barnes and Noble—long before I could have prophesied the exact degree of its future resonance. But I couldn't bring myself to pick it up in 2016. Perhaps it felt too soon, too real, too depressing. 

Whatever the reason, I'm glad I left the book alone until now, and only read it in this still-unsettling year, 2022. Had I started it while Trump was still on the campaign trail, I might have picked up a few of the key ways in which he resembled Lewis' fictional demagogue, Berzelius Windrip. But one would need to live through the entire (first?) Trump presidency to grasp the salience of the analogy—the full extent of the uncanny resemblance between the two bombastic panderers. 

Moreover, if one had read the novel in those earlier days, one would have been able to relate only to the disturbing, precarious, yet somehow exhilarating and farcical mood that Lewis evinces in the first 100 pages or so. One wouldn't have been able to feel to the same extent the emotional weight of the subsequent episodes Lewis describes: the steady draining of morale, the difficulties involving in mounting any sustained resistance, the exile of his characters in Canada. 

And finally, one wouldn't have understood the full relevance of one of the key points that Lewis's fable conveys: that the rise of fascism is about more than one man. In the early days of the Trump campaign for presidency, of course, one could pretend that the problem was just him. Now, almost seven years after he announced his bid for the presidency, we can see that the new era of U.S. politics that took shape in that moment will outlast his four years in office—whether he runs again or not. 

But first of all, is it really true to say that Trump resembles Lewis' fictional usurper? Oh, let us count the ways! First, there is Windrip's ability to drum up massive crowds; his preference for rallies; his followers' canny use of new media platforms to evade the usual paternalistic controls of regulators and the traditional methods of presidential politics that kept both candidates' positions within certain guardrails (the new media is radio in the case of one of Windrip's chief advocates—the Bishop Prang—Twitter and social media in the case of Trump). 

Lewis' description of the hypnotic power of Windrip's rhetoric—his use of simple words sized according to his inane ideas; his trick of promising the impossible, with no plan whatsoever for how to deliver it, and—when pressed for details on its feasibility—to simply repeat that he will get it done. (Viz. "we will build a wall and Mexico will pay for it.") Here is Lewis on Windrip: he "was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his 'ideas' almost idiotic"—yet people stake their lives on this promises. 

One is reminded of how Steve Bannon allegedly primed Trump before his every appearance—in the early campaign days—by reminding him to focus on one simple, ugly thought, and hammer it in over and over again with minimal variation and no elaboration from a policy standpoint—Mexico, the wall, etc. 

Which brings us to another key resemblance between the fictional dictator and the all-too-real president: their strange hollowness in themselves; their character as a marionette of people with more far-reaching designs. Lewis portrays Windrip as simply motivated by an unthinking narcissism and will to personal power—the content of the platform and slogans that will land him there are left up to henchmen. The book that introduced him to the world, the songs and false promises of his campaign, are all dreamt up by his vizier—Lee Sarason. 

One can well imagine Steve Bannon fancying himself a kind of Lee Sarason—the grey eminence that has simply found a toddler-like readily-manipulable narcissist to serve as his front man. We know, of course, that Trump—just like Windrip—did not write a word of his own bestseller that launched him to public prominence; nor did he have much of a hand in the early content of his platform. The text and substance of his speeches—during the campaign and first days of his presidency—came mostly from Bannon. 

And some of those Bannon-authored speeches, in turn, so closely resemble the fulminations of the fictitious Berzelius Windrip that one almost thinks it possible that Bannon read Lewis's novel before Trump's inauguration and decided to mimic its phraseology. An early group of Windrip's supporters, for instance, are dubbed the "League of Forgotten Men," and the dictator often commits himself to the protection of "forgotten men" in his speeches. 

Turn now to Trump's inauguration day speech, from January 2017—authored by Bannon. "The forgotten men and women of our country," he preached, "will be forgotten no longer."

The fictional Windrip could even have been the origin of the MAGA catchphrase that continues to haunt our politics and define a reactionary nationalist political movement that is far larger than Trump himself (or perhaps there is just an ideal-type of home-spun American bombast and jingoism to which all the most idiotic political sloganeering will eventually approximate. "To you and you only," says Windrip in one of his sermons to his followers, "I look for help to make America a proud, rich land again."

The rest of the plot of Lewis's novel, to be sure, has not yet come to pass in real life. The fictional Berzelius carries off a successful coup, early in his presidency. The all-too-real Trump attempted one late in his and failed—so far. The triumphant MAGA movement did not succeed in suspending elections, declaring Trump president-for-life, or locking up all their political opponents and disfavored ethnic, religious, and racial groups in concentration camps—as they do in Lewis's novel. 

But, as I signaled at the outset, there are nonetheless a number of ways in which Lewis's prophecy resonates far beyond the conclusion of Trump's four-year-term and the failure of his bid to seize power unlawfully. For one thing, the movement he birthed is still with us, and has developed a foothold in our national politics that transcends and will outlast him as an individual—much as Windrip is ultimately booted from his office by his own supporters (including the back-room Svengali Sarason), who nonetheless proceed to maintain the dictatorship he created and even exacerbate its effects. 

Likewise, history is not over—and therefore we are far from knowing at this point that Lewis's prophecy will not come true to an even greater extent than it already has. MAGA Republicans may not have succeeded in overturning the results of the last election or sending their political opponents to internment camps—but there are gathering signs that many of them would very much like to do so. 

Major GOP operative and wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice Virginia Thomas, for instance, texted in the aftermath of the 2020 election that she had heard and apparently believed that Joe Biden's family and a host of media figures, Democrats, election officials, and other MAGA bogeymen were "being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition." She seemed to think that was an excellent idea. 

That sounds an awful lot like a proposal for erecting Berzelius Windrip-style internment camps to jail Democrats, liberals, and old-style Republicans who don't endorse MAGA illegality. 

Then there is the contemporary GOP's escalating rhetoric against various ethnic, religious, racial, and sexual and gender-identity-based minorities. From his campaign days on, of course, Trump made a point of explicitly—not in the circumspect and coded ways long beloved of right-wing politicians but overtly, by name—attacking Latino immigrants, calling for discrimination against Muslims, maligning Syrian and Somali refugees, and other particularly vulnerable groups. 

In the time since his presidency has ended, the right continues to use many of these same talking points, but their bigotry has also metastasized to incorporate other minorities. J.D. Vance blames unrelated social problems on "Communist China," for instance, in a way that makes it clear he's not making a fine distinction between an authoritarian regime in mainland China and the global diaspora of people of Chinese descent. The long-simmering antisemitism on the American far-right is also coming increasingly into the open. 

In Lewis's novel, an esteemed rabbi is murdered by fascist thugs, who then excuse themselves in the press by reporting that they witnessed the Jewish leader in the process of consummating a ritual murder. It's a particularly barbaric form of antisemitism that one thinks might have sounded implausible in Lewis's day—but this medieval "blood libel" has recrudesced on the American right in present times in the form of the Q-Anon conspiracy theory, which similarly depicts a shadowy cabal of elites as feasting on the blood of Christian babies. 

And while most GOP politicians still feel the need to put some public distance between themselves and the Q-Anon conspiracy theories and blatant antisemitism espoused by much of their voting base, there are signs that both are increasingly seeping into the Republican mainstream. A recent Washington Post profile describes the career of a state senator in Arizona who went gangbusters in out-of-state fundraising despite openly attending white nationalist rallies and posting blatantly antisemitic memes on social media.

As for Q-Anon content, the increasing prevalence on the right of the term "groomer" as an all-purpose term of abuse for anyone who opposes the MAGA agenda, but especially members of sexual and gender-identity minorities and their supporters, signals that the core of that conspiracy theory—namely, the belief that Democrats are masterminding a conspiracy to traffic and rape children—has now entered the mainstream of Republican politics. 

A perfect illustration of the extremism of the MAGA GOP came this week, when the nation faced a horrendous shortage of infant formula. Instead of providing an analysis or proposing any solutions to the problem, Republicans and right-wing media turned it into a meme to attack immigrants and Democrats. Right-wing outlets noticed that the U.S. government was purchasing infant formula—as it is legally and morally obliged to do—to feed asylum-seeking children who are currently in U.S. custody. Republicans decided to attack this routine aspect of preserving the lives of people in detention (keep in mind that most Republicans also support the mandatory detention of asylum-seekers). 

Babies locked up in U.S. custody must be either fed by the government or released (the latter of which Republicans oppose). If they are not fed or released to adult caregivers outside of detention, they will starve. By condemning the federal government for feeding children in their custody, the mainstream Republican and Fox News position now seems to be that the U.S. government should both lock up asylum-seekers indefinitely and deliberately starve them to death. This seems to be a call for mass murder.

As this rhetoric heated up , third-highest-ranking House GOP caucus member, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York's 21st Congressional district, tweeted out a bizarre insult—she described House Democrats, "the White House," and other people who opposed her position on the issue as "pedo grifters." Huh? 

So, a major figure in the House Republican caucus seems to publicly believe that Democrats who object to the proposal of starving babies are "pedophiles." This can only make sense if one is implicitly embracing some version of the Q-Anon conspiracy theory, and believes that all immigrant children at the border are secretly being trafficked to feed Democrats' pedophile sex rings or quest to harvest children's blood. 

If major Republican politicians, GOP party operatives, and conservative media personalities now believe that immigrant babies should be locked up and then denied food, effectively murdering them; that Democrats and anyone else—Republicans included—who opposes the MAGA agenda is a pedophile and part of a secret cabal that wants to rape and possibly ritually murder children; and that plans are underway to arrest these political opponents and intern them in offshore detention camps, and that this would be a good thing... we really are not so far from the dystopia of Berzelius Windrip as one might wish to believe. 

"But the country's too big for that! We have too much history of democracy and independence! Fascism and dictatorship could never take hold here!" That's what many of us still believe. It's also exactly what the characters in Lewis's novel tell themselves. "It can't happen here!", they say. 

But then it does.